“What is a quantum application accelerator? Why would I need one? Doesn’t quantum already accelerate applications?”
Many of our clients ask that question when we first meet. It’s so important to understand quantum applications and the options you have with them. We wanted to share the background about why we created a quantum application accelerator, and the value it brings to our partners and our clients.
Why You Need a Quantum Application Accelerator
First let’s talk about the why. The answer is, because we are solving significant challenges with quantum computing that often go unnoticed due to the hype around quantum hardware.
What are those challenges? First, there’s the high expense and lengthy time required to program a quantum computer before you ever get a result. Then there’s the fact that quantum computers can’t scale to solve real-world problems today, and most likely won’t scale to meet enterprise needs in the near term.
[blockquote]A quantum application accelerator is a much faster, easier, and cheaper way to leverage the value of quantum computing to get better results, today.[/blockquote]
As we’ve noted, quantum computers demand a completely new set of skills to define and create the programs you need to get results. This translates to months or years of highly sophisticated and entirely different programming before you can use a quantum computer.
Even quantum experts, folks like PhDs in physics, mathematics, or quantum mechanics, require a significant amount of time and testing to use today’s vendors’ software development kits (SDKs) to create and successfully run a quantum program.
That’s not a positive thing when your organization needs better, faster insights right now.
What Does a Quantum Application Accelerator Do for Me?
Exactly what you’d expect from the name.
A quantum application accelerator speeds up your time-to-results from a quantum computer or uses quantum techniques to accelerate results in the case of using a classical computer.
[blockquote]Results are, after all, the reason we need quantum.[/blockquote]
Beyond the hype and coolness factors, you need better insights and data to make better business decisions. Especially as your business data volumes grow and your decisions become more complex and dynamic in today’s accelerated world.
How does a quantum application accelerator drive better insights for you? Consider the following.
Since the accelerator is essentially ready-to-run software, there’s no need to learn complex new skills or code at low levels for specific quantum hardware needs. Quantum experts in the market tell us that programming can take eight months or more just to write a simple application. An accelerator empowers today’s subject matter experts to run an application/problem on a quantum computer, or with quantum techniques on classical systems, with no quantum programming.
[blockquote]This accelerates your time-to-first-results from months or years to a day or two.[/blockquote]
Think about the cost and time savings in that acceleration. And by the way, your subject matter experts aren’t left behind to try to explain your business data needs to the scientists who are writing your quantum programs.
[blockquote]Quantum application accelerators speed your access to better, more insightful results for your business-critical decisions.[/blockquote]
Take constrained optimization, where Qatalyst is focused. You can run constrained optimization on both classical and quantum computers, using the exact same function calls. This means no programming changes as you run on both architectures, but even more importantly for today’s businesses, it means acceleration of classical results in multiple areas.
Instead of waiting for a classical computer to hopefully complete its computation and deliver a single result that meets the requirements, a quantum application accelerator for optimization delivers:
- Faster time to results for classical systems, thanks to the application of sophisticated quantum techniques to the problem, data structure, and processing. Using quantum techniques, you can expect significant acceleration right now on a classical machine as it computes sophisticated optimization results.
- Faster time to explore quantum computing. Instead of hiring expensive quantum experts to write your application or algorithms, your subject matter experts can easily submit problems to a variety of quantum computers, without any need for programming applications, algorithms, or low-level coding for each individual quantum architecture.
- Augmented accuracy of results. Iteration, and other quantum techniques, as part of the computation on classical computers, brings faster results that are more accurate. Therefore, you’ll make better decisions to accelerate your business success.
- Expedited, diverse results for better insights. Today’s constrained optimization approaches deliver one answer to meet the requirements of your problem. Quantum application accelerators deliver a diversity of results, all of which meet those same business requirements. You get a variety of results and can easily determine which will best accelerate your business based on your specific situation and a specific point in time.
The Bottom Line?
As you can see, quantum application accelerators offer key opportunities for faster, better, and more insightful analyses.
Ready-to-run quantum software, such as Qatalyst, eliminates the expensive and lengthy complex programming that SDKs require.
Instead of focusing your effort and resources on developing quantum expertise and code, your business analysts and experts focus on making better, more insightful decisions to accelerate your business results.
This speeds your time-to-value for your customers and your bottom-line profitability.
